About

People who write to advice columnists are usually looking for help in having a difficult conversation. Most advice-column advice comes down to “Have you tried telling that person what you just told me?”

Movie characters are all direct and brave and articulate the way that we almost never get to be in real life. They get to have those difficult conversations and make them sound awesome. That’s not because screenwriters are life experts. We are not. You should probably not be taking life advice from a woman whose plan for paying back $100K in grad school debt is “be an indie filmmaker.”

I can’t tell you what to do. But I can try to tell you what to say, or lend you some courage in saying it.

If you have a question, submit it here. I will give you honest answers and try to make you sound awesome.

And but so I do not even remember how I found your fine embloggenation because I have been too busy reading and enjoying it to give somebody credit, sorry, but thank you (and mystery source of finding your blog, whoever that may be)! Keep up the fantabulousness!

I had to share that reading your archives, including the amazing comments, has been the best way to spend two days home sick in bed. Your advice is thoughtful, sensible, truthful and respectful. I’m a 50 something woman, and I’m learning so much from you and your readers. This blog is a wonderful use of the Interwebs. Thank you!

Kudos, props (mad ones, even), and all that.
Very kewl.
(found my way here from a link in a comment on a thread at pandagon, if that’s interesting or useful to you)
SHOCKED to see an indication on this page suggesting (cannot really be right, can it?) that the site has, as yet, no “likes” on facebook. Briefly considered finally breaking down and joining fb just so I could confer one. Apologies — I can’t so quickly break my vow never to give in to that particular potential addiction.
But I wish you every success with this, and your other endeavors.
Cheers,
smartalek

Now that you have over 300 questions, it’s getting hard to find things. Would you consider making an index of posts? Just a simple list of titles would be a help, though title plus tags would be even awesomer.

I’ll be honest, I do not know when or if I will ever get around to this. Categories + archives + search bar are going to be it for a while, unless some volunteer wants to take this on or someone knows a WordPress widget that does this easily.

I think it’d be awesome, but I’m not sure why the task should be dumped on Captain Awkward (who seems to have an absurdly full plate herself), when “many hands make light work” and all that, and surely there are 21 of us in the Awkward community who would pitch in?

I can’t figure out how to reply to the ‘I want to eat lunch by myself’ post itself (maybe you can’t after a certain amount of time has passed?) anyways reading that post reminded me of this comic I saw (the women in my ex’s family are absolutely convinced that Being An Introvert Is Wrong and Unhealthy and Rude, and back when I was with him at one point he sent me this link half in sympathy)

Dear Captain Awkward, You are the most amazing writer and give REALLY great, thoughtful and DIFFERENT advise than the hum-drum, same old. I have a talent-crush on you and I am a straight woman! Please write a book. Write many!

I want to make a clarification here. I was being cheeky about saying you were a troublemaker. You are a troublemaker in a good one. Anyone who makes people think, get out of their comfort zone and gives them food for thought is a good thing.

I just wanted to say thank you. I’ve never written to you for advice but I read your blog regularly. Recently I needed to have a really difficult conversation with my ex – we had been living together before we broke up and had agreed that I would keep the place while he moved out, but he was taking his own sweet time about doing it.

I remembered all the advice you and the Awkward Army have given. I used my words. I set a deadline and told him what would happen if he broke it. He signed the lease on a new flat yesterday.

Thank you so much for all the awesome advice you’ve given. You help more people than you can possibly know.

So I read the first letter you ever responded to, and you linked to this other blog you have, about food and soups. Being a bit of a collector of recipes (growing up in an Irish/Italian/Jewish household meant learning to cook/bake/fry/grill/mix/freeze/sautee/… was mandatory, and I have fun with it), I was very excited to find it.

Still am. Amazing stuff.

I was just wondering if you were gonna post there again in the future…

I just need to say thanks to the Captain and Commander and commenters and everyone else here. I had a really creepy experience this last weekend, and in the past I would have sat there and taken it (because maybe he doesn’t mean to be creepy! maybe I’m overreacting!) up to and beyond the point of danger. This time, I kept “no is a complete sentence” in my head, and got out as soon as I could. Yeah, I still second-guess myself (but maybe he reeeeeeeeeaaly didn’t mean it!), but not nearly as much as I would have a year ago. So thanks, everyone.

Maybe not the place for this but I couldn’t find a link to send this by email. I was reading the post about Predator Prevention and this isn’t strictly on topic but might be of interest to people here.

Two women started the site linked below as a part of their women’s studies class because they didn’t feel safe taking public transit. They’re collecting stories of harassment on public transit (specifically sexual/gender based) and posting them in order to demonstrate publicly just how widespread the problem is in our city.

I wanted to give you a heads up that DatingAdvice.com has named you as one of the year’s “10 Best Blogs for Dating Questions.” The rankings were published this morning, and we’ll be promoting it on-site and through other social media channels over the coming days:

We’ve been amazed at how the “10 Best Blogs for Dating Questions” article has taken off. I hope you’re seeing great response from it on your end.

We got a request to create “10 Best” badges for bloggers to display on their sites, so our design team came up with some great designs. If you’re interested, I can send them to you. Please email me if you’d like a badge.

Hi
Please email me at industry@flickerfest.com.au we would like to invite you to submit your film The Wardrobe to our Children’s program. We will need to get your film ASAP for consideration so please email me as soon as possible.

Ahoy captain! A few months ago, I started up my own blog (http://notacasualobserver.wordpress.com/), and there have already been a couple times I’ve thought about linking to you, but I wanted to check with you first to see if that would be ok!

Hey Captain Awkward and/or fans! I just read this article about a thoroughly disgusting predator who is like the culmination of all the “Danger – Get out!” creeper behaviors I’ve read about here. The molester used isolation and boundary-pushing over time to victimize these girls.

And when they were testifying, the girls talked about feeling like they couldn’t say “Stop,” or do anything because they couldn’t objectively prove that what was going on was creepy. It made me think of all the great advice here about belonging to yourself and having every right to say “No,” without justifying it or worrying that the person wasn’t really being creepy and you’re going to insult them, etc. I wish for their sake someone had mentioned such things to these girls.

Dear Captain Awkward – I want to say thank you. Last weekend, I finally stood up to a Darth Vader friend. It was a thoroughly unhealthy situation that had been chipping away at my limited confidence for ages, but I was doing the classic “he’s a good person deep down, he’s just having a hard time” thing. Reading articles and advice on here made me realise that I didn’t deserve this but also I wasn’t being weak or stupid to be in the situation. At last, I have said all of the things to him that needed to be said. It was incredibly cathartic – like I didn’t even realise I was carrying some enormous weight around until I put it down. So many thanks to you and the commenters here. xx

Hello dear Captain — I hope you are well! You and the Awkward community have covered so many helpful topics, and I am very grateful for that. I wonder if I could ask you to consider giving a little more attention to a topic that has concerned me lately, and which I don’t find discussed much here (relatively speaking)? I speak of elder care, this club into which I’ve been newly initiated. I’m surprised at the number of people I know who are dealing with this when I give them the news of my own caring situation. I wonder if you’ve received any questions on this issue, and if so, could you perhaps toss a few from your backlog out there for community consideration? What I’ve found so far here has been great (especially #416, “How Do I Get a Team You?”) and I’d be ever so grateful for more insight and sharing. Thanks for all that you do — I love this site so much! Very best regards to you, Captain!

Hi J., thanks for the nice note! This is a topic I would need to get guest posters to cover, but I know there are others dealing with this stuff in the community. I think your best bet for speedy discussions/community building is probably the forums at friendsofcaptainawkward.com.

Hi Jennifer — thank you for your kind reply! I may look into the forums, and I am certainly sourcing information elsewhere. Maybe sometime I can share some of that. I wish you, your guest posters, moderators, and the Awkward Community a brave and bright 2015. I especially wish you well this January, for all those self-care and creative projects in the works. Very best to you, Jennifer!

I hope all is well with you. Healthline just published an infographic detailing the effects of depression on the body. This is an interactive chart allowing the reader to pick the side effect they want to learn more about.

Considering I scrolled for 5 minutes to get to the bottom of your long fan list, I am not sure if you will ever get a chance to read this. If you are reading this, I just want to say I really enjoy your posts! You inspire us to write more and hopefully reach your level. We were recently nominated for the Inspirational Blogger Award. Part of this acceptance is nominating fellow bloggers you find inspiring, so naturally your name popped on our list. Don’t feel obligated to pass the torch but we just wanted you to know you’re pretty awesome!

I didn’t know where I could say thank you for what you do, so I’m putting it here. Your blog and community was one of the first things I thought about the sleepless night of 11/8/16. I will be making things awkward all over the place to combat raising my son in a hateful world and family. Thank you, you are appreciated, and it is important for you to know how much.

Did you pay your debt back and/or manage to make a movie that earned money? If so, a hearty congratulations. If not, then I agree with your own words… i.e. that people shouldn’t be taking life advice from someone whose finances are out of whack and who have failed to perform well in their career. We should take advice from people we want to model…. not from people who have and have done things we should want to avoid. Just my .02.

Dear Captain- First let me thank you for everything you do… I’ve only read a few things but you seem very dedicated open minded and genuine. I have been thinking about sharing something for a while now and I need a platform to share, discuss, and help others. I am not a doctor, I am not an expert I am just a regular nobody living my life the best I can. So some information three piece that I wrote… It is three “rules“ to make any relationship work. I know that seems far-fetched and magnificent and also totally egotistical but hear me out! I would love to share my stuff with you if you have it please get in contact with me and we can go from there I’m not looking for acknowledgment but would love to be a part of the workings if it is presented on your site. Thank you so much in advance and I look forward to hearing from you

I’m so happy to have stumbled across our blog! Can’t believe how long this thread is – go you! I love the fact that you have so many posts on different topics ❤️ I’m just starting up my blog but I hope that one day it will be as awesome as yours 😃